By Christopher Tremblay, Staff Sports Writer

After finishing the regular season with an 18-2 record, the Franklin volleyball team was awarded a five seed in the Division 1 State Volleyball Tournament, where they dispatched of Braintree, Lincoln-Sudbury, Andover (the four seed) and Newton South all by the score of 3-0 to gain entry into the Finals. Once there, the Panthers hung on to beat number two seed Newton North 3-2 to bring home the State Championship to Franklin. 

Captains Makalya Kuykendall, an outside hitter, and Olivia Alberti, a middle hitter, provided the leadership throughout the year that the Panthers needed to keep the team going. According to first year Franklin Coach Chris Ridolfi, their personalities were a good mix with his and the duo brought a competitiveness and a positive spin to the game making it easy for the rest of the team to follow their lead. 

“Being my first-year coaching at Franklin, I knew a lot of the players through my coaching club volleyball. They were a talented group of kids, but I didn’t now if they had hit their ceiling,” Ridolfi said. “However, my outlook would change the first day that I met the captains: They told me that this year they were wining the State Championship, so it was them who set the expectations.”

Right away, the new coach noticed that the girls had the talent to accomplish their highly set goals, and it would be his responsibility to pace the team so that they were playing their best volleyball by November. Franklin succumbed to Attleboro in their first meeting of the year, but when the Panthers were able to walk away with a win in the second meeting, the new Coach had an inclination that this team could possibly conclude the season with a State Championship, something that he has been hoping to accomplish since he started playing the sport himself. 

“Coming into Franklin for my first year, I found that these kids took me on a journey of a lifetime,” he said. “They gave me something that I have been chasing for a long time, some 30 years later, to deliver this was very special to me.”

Now that the season is over, Kuykendall will leave Franklin High School as the all-time leader in digs as well as kills for the Panthers in addition to being named a Hockomock All-Star and Player of the Year. She will continue to play volleyball next fall at Bentley. Alberti brough a versatility to the team with her blocks, serves and all-around play while getting the rest of the team to play together and do what was necessary to win.

Although the entire team contributed to the successful season that the Panthers had, Emma Cunningham, senior libero, Emerson Delleo, sophomore outside hitter who developed into a second offensive threat behind Kuykendall, and Phoebe O’Connor, freshman setter who took the reins at the position forcing Ridolfi to go with a single setter instead of two, all were big contributors to the team being able to go as far as they were able to. 

The great senior leadership with the talent, to the younger kids’ desire, took this team to the top of the mountain,” the Franklin Coach said. “They continued to play hard and didn’t blink, and next thing you know were winning the State Championship.”

Franklin’s State Championship team will lose five seniors when they regroup next fall. Ridolfi is sure that next year’s team will reload and establish themselves all over again, relying on the younger athletes.

While the Franklin varsity team was able to take home the Division 1 State Volleyball Championship this year, Ridolfi is not worried about the future. The Junior Varsity team concluded their season undefeated, and the freshman squad only lost one game, leaving all three volleyball teams with an impressive record of 64-3 this year. 

There is talent in the Franklin gym, and Ridolfi is lucky to have taken over the program just in time as the Panthers prepare to make a statement over the next few years in the volleyball circuit.